Reading Medieval So/dies XL (2014)
Lingua Franca Legalis? A French Vernacular Legal Culture from England to the Levant
Ada Kuskowski Southern Methodist University
The history of European law is generally written as a series of oppositions. There is the 'common law' of the Church and of university Roman law, as opposed to the various ' particular' laws divided by pohty. Within these parti cular laws, there is yet another division that is seen to form by the end of the twelfth century, the one between Engli sh Common Law and continental legal culture, whether the latter was defined as a patchwork of custom or as a unified block through the influence of the ius commune. These are not just descriptions of legal geographies; rather, these di visions are of key importance because they encode identity both in terms of intern al development and in opposition to one another. They are important, furthermore , because they not only describe the shape of medieval legal identity but they also serve to herald the form that legal culture will take in later nascent nation states. Within the fi eld of medieval studies more generally there has been a push to look beyond traditional borders to see whether and what kinds of connections can be made across traditionally assumed boundaries.' This move has been much slower to influence the writing of legal history, especially when it comes to the 'particular' or customary laws outside of the ius commune. Paul Hyams is one of few scholars who has looked at these sorts of connections, notably di scussing th e similarities in early legal-treatise writing in England and France in hi s 'The Common Law and the French Connection' and more recentl y evaluating the 'Frenchness' that underlay the constructive thinking of the earl y Common Law of England in his article 'Thinking Engli sh Law in French: The Angevins and the Common Law'.' As Hyams noted there, ' it was the French hexagon [ ... ] that set the fashions' in this time of burgeoning pol ities. pri nces interested in law, and jurists exerting themselves in developing new literatures devoted to law.] This ' French hexagon'. or the ' French global ' as others mi gh t dub it, is the subject of the present paper.'
Paul Hyams, 'The Common Law and the French Connection', in Proceedings of the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies IV, 1981, cd. by R. All en Brown (Woodbridge: Boydell , 1982), pp.77-92. 2 Hyams. 'The Common Law and the French Connection'. 3 Paul R. Hyams, 'Thinking English Law in French: The Angevins and the Common Law', in Feud. Violence and Practice: Essays in Medieval Studies in Honor o/Stephen D. White ,ed. by Belle S. Tuten and Tracey L. Billado (Farnham: Ashgate, 20 I 0), pp. 175-96 (at p. 175). 4 French Global: A New Approach to Literary History, ed. by Christie McDonald and Susan Rubin Suleiman (New York: Columbia Uni versity Press, 2011). LINGUA FRANCA LEGALIS? 141
The sy mbiotic relationship between language, borders and identity generated in the enthusiasm of nineteenth-century nationalisms, and perceived as an aspect of the state in the contemporary world, does not accurately reflect the situation in medieval Europe. Borders were not as exact as they arc today, nor did they exclude and define as they do now, and language certainly was not confined to them. The limits of culture in the Middle Ages were often broadened by conquest and resettlement, and one of the consequences of this was a francophone culture that extended geographically from England, through France, into the maritime world and down into the crusader-occupied Levant. Notably, when this medievaljrancophonie, if you will, began forma li zing and textualizing its juridical notions in the second half of the thirteenth century. it was part of a wave that was abandoning Latin in favor of French as its language of expression. Of course, this move was by 'no means even or complete. As Serge Lusignan explained more generally. the move to the vernacular is one that extended from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries and never neatly excluded Latin.5 Nonetheless, it must be noteworthy that from the English moors to the Atlantic waters and down into the sand s of Cyprus, where the displaced Kingdom of Jerusalem relocated after the crusaders lost the Holy City, various authors made the decision to describe the di spute-resolution customs of their lay courts in French. In other woras, they chose not to write in the established 'international' language of Latin, and in the case of colonial lands al so chose not to write in the language spoken by most of the inhabitants, but in French. If we draw a map of the ambit of this lingua franca legalis we see that it covers a huge swath of territory. It is not quite as large a realm as that of the ius commune, but it is large enough that we should be asking ourselves whether and to what extent we can speak of an autonomous and transnational legal culture that was francophone and customary. And if there was such a legal culture, united by vernacul ar language but not based on the territorial bounds of a specific kingdom, then what does that say about the relationship between law, language and identity in the later Middle Ages? This paper aims at setting out some preliminary ideas in relation to these questions with the intention of opening up future research considerations, first by discussing the cultural presence of the medieval jrancophonie, and then examining how it might resonate in the legal literature of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
5 See generally, Serge Lusignan, La langue des rois au Moyen Age: Ie jranrais en France e! en Anglelerre (Paris: Presses Uni versilaires de France, 2004). 142 ADA MARIA KUSKOWSKI
The Vernacular Turn and Medieval Francophonie Twelfth-century Europe witnessed the beginning of a great cultural transformation that saw the shift from 'a culture dominated by monastic and dynastic concerns to those of a vernacular-speaking, married, commercial and professional laity' . ~ The importance of the rise of the vernacular, both as a vehicle and a corollary of that shift, has largely been recognized and studied in a diversity of fields, from literature to diplomatics. These studies, however, generally contain themselves to the boundaries of a particular kingdom and in so doing serve to define these entities rather than see conunonalities between them. As Thomas Brunner recently noted, while the shift from Latin to the vernacular languages is one of the momentous events of the Middle Ages, studies of Europe-wide vemacularization remain in their infancy.? As Patrick Geary has shown, Latin had become the language of communication for an extreme minority by the end of the MiddleAges" By then, it had taken on an ideological role increasingly connected to the Church and the clergy and had become primarily their language, one that was seen from the outside as secret, complicated and even a tool for deception.' By the end of the thirteenth century, French had largely replaced Latin as the international language of communication and diplomacy. 'o The study of Fre~nch was eagerly recommended in various quarters due to a number of factors - the Crusades, the spread of French chivalrous culture and li terature, and the importance of France in trade, notably in the fairs of Champagne." The thirteenth century was the great watershed moment for the French vernacular. As Jan Ziolkowski remarked, there was a real 'cultural exuberance' that led to confidence in and the refinement of vernacular language and the culture it represented. '2 The result was
6 Mary Carruthers and Jan M. Ziolkowski, 'Introduction', in The Medieval Craft of Memory: An Anthology of Texts and Picture,\', ed. by Carruthers and Ziolkowski (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), p. 24. 7 Thomas Brunner, 'Le passage aux langues vernaculaires dans les actes de la pratique en Occident' , Le Moyen Age, cxv (2009): 29-72 (at p. 29). 8 Patrick Geary, 'What Happened to Latin?', Speculum, 84 (2009): 859-873 (at p. 864). 9 Patrick Geary, Language and Power in the Early Middle Ages, Jerusalem: Historical Society of Israel (Lebanon: Brandeis University Press, 2013), pp. 58-9. This can be seen in the pithy expression 'parler en romans sans latin' which, as Geary (al p. 59) noted, meant to speak openly without obfuscation. 10 Geary, 'What Happened to Latin?' , p. 864. 11 Bernard Bischoff, 'The Study of Foreign Languages in the Middle Ages', SpecuLum, 36 (1961): 209- 224 (at p. 210). 12 Jan M. Ziolkowski , 'Latin and Vernacular Literature', in The New Cambridge Medieval History , vol.4 (c. 1024-1198), ed. by D. E. Luscombe and Jonathan Riley-Smith (Cambridge: CUP, 2003), p. 664. •
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not simply the registration of an oral tongue, but the constitution of the vernacular as a 'written tongue'. 13 This, in turn, permitted it to obtain the communicational competence that had been hitherto reserved to Latin, such as expressing Jaw in writing.'4 French developed into the most influential vernacular in the high and late Middle Ages. 15 As Sharon Kinoshita remarked, 'cultivated outside of the borders of the nation-state that will later lend it its name to both the language and the literature, Old French [was] extra-territorial avant La leure' . 16 This in itself was rather remarkable considering that nothing close to a French nation existed when the French vernacular appears in the twelfth century - Occitan dominated south of the Loire, the French king only controlled his small patch around the Jle-de-France, and his power was dwarfed by the most powerful French speaking ruler of the day, the Angevin king of England. 17 Thus we have the formation of a supra-national 'imagined community' based on a vernacular but not directly developing concomitantly one particular nation-state.ls The rise of the French vernacular in Medieval Europe is a wonderful instance of a cultural 'imagined community', one certainly based on the development of centers of power from Westminster to Paris and Cyprus, but not yet defining the identity of anyone of them. Part of what made the French vernacular a great success story \vas the expansion of the spheres of influence of the two 'French' kings, the King of France and the King of England. Both of these kings had made French their royal language alongside Latin." French radiated out of its traditional enclaves through the activities of these kings and their expansion of their spheres of power. Their military and dynastic interests brought French to Wales, Scotland, Gascony, Flanders, Sicily, the Near East, and parts of Central Europe (Bohemia), all places where French was spoken and written by a wide variety of people with different mother tongues.20 In many of these places, French became an elite language
13 Brunner, 'Le passage aux langues vernaculaires' , p. 31. 14 Brunner, 'Le passage aux langues vernaculaires', p. 32. 15 Simon Gaunt and Sarah Kay , 'Introduction', in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval French Literature, ed. by Gaunt and Kay (Cambridge: CUP, 2008), p.l. 16 Sharon Kinoshita, 'Wodding Medieval French', in Global French, ed. by McDonald and Suleiman, p. 6. 17 Kinoshita, 'Worlding Medieval French', p. 6. 18 Benedict Anderson, in his fOimulation of the 'imagined community', describes the Latin-based imagined community of Christendom being displaced by localized or 'nationalized' vernacular competitors (Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, second edn (New York : Verso, 2003), pp. 41-44). 19 See generally, Lusignan, La langue des rois. 20 Gaunt and Kay, 'Introduction', in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval French Literature, p. 3; Serge Lusignan, ' French Language in Contact with English: Social Context and Linguistic Change (mid-13th-14th centuries)" in Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England c.1 JOO-c.lSOO, ed. by Jocelyn Wogan -Browne et a!. (Rochester, N. Y : York Medieval Press, 2009), pp. 23,29. 144 ADA MARIA KUSKOWSKI connected to ruling groups who controlled the centers of culture and power. Of course, the French language has a different history in all of these places and develops local particularities in each one. As Simon Gaunt and Sarah Kay have aptly remarked , French was initially less of a language and more of a collection of dialects ?! There were two main types - the langue d 'oi1 in the Northern part and the langue d'oc in Occitania - but both of these were generally referred to as romans. Within that, there were various dialects such as Francien which centered around the royal court on the lie de France, or champenois, jranc-complois, orIeanais. poitevin , normand, etc.22 Modern scholars like to give some of these dialects particular assignations, such as An glo-French for the French dialect in England." It is only in the fourteenth century thatfranrois began to refer to the vernacular written in the Parisian model, and to eclipse romans to designate French in the French kin gdom.24 Since the purpose of the present article is to see the degree to which a mutually intelligible legal literature may have not only been aiming at a local audience but also a larger non-nation-based francophone one, we will be considering French writ large as a unified category including many dialects and focusing on the unifying aspects. Linked through various networks, writers who chose to write in French were creating a repub/ique europeenne des lellres whose center was the French-speaking world, if without a more precise location at this poinLlj The geographic diffusion of French permitted those writing in that language to reach an international readership and, indeed, many saw themselves as working within an international context.26 Whether writing in French because of its beauty, because of its prestige, because it lVould pl ease the right elites, or because it was widespread and could reach an 'international' audience, the undoubted effect was the wider diffusion of Old French."
2 1 Gaunt and Kay, ' Introduction', in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval French Literature, p. 2. 22 For more on French dialects. see Lusignan , La langue des rois, pp. 62 ff. 23 Jocelyn Wogan-Brown has pointed out that the choice of the term 'Anglo-Norman ' to denote French texts composed in the British Isles from the Conquest to the late Middle Ages, and of ' Anglo-French ' for texts imported in to England and other continental contacts, have themselves encouraged the impression of discontinuity in the French of post-Conquest England. This is not to completely discount tbe validity of the terms but to acknowledge the elisions they carry and contain the place of French in England in a way that obfuscates its place in insular cul ture and its relationship with greater francophone culture. (Wogan-Browne, ' What's in a Name?: The " French" of "England'" . in Language and Culture in Medieval Britain , pp.1-3) 24 Lusignan, La langue del' rois, p. 221. 25 Kinoshita, ' Worlding Medieval French', p.7. 26 Gaunt and Kay, ' Introduction', in The Cambridge Compallion to Medieval Frellch Literature. p. I. 27 Ki noshita, ' Worlding Medieval French', p. 7. Ki noshi ta is speaking of Old French here as a Mediterranean vernacular but her comment hol ds true beyond there as well. LINGUA FRANCA LEGALIS? 145
By the end of the thirteenth century many non-natives were choosing French as their language of choice. Brunetto Latini , Dante's famous tutor and author of the Li Uvres dOlt Tresor (c.1260-1267), probably the most famous encyclopedia of knowledge of the day, chose French as his literary language. Brunetto gave two reasons to explain why he chose to write hi s book ' in romanz, according to the language of the French, since we are Italian ' - 'the first, since we are in France, and the other, because this dialect is more delightful and more common to all people (porce que fa parleure est plus deli table et plus commune a toutes gens)' .1' Brunetto, then, had both aesthetic and very practical reasons for choosing to write in French ?9 Already in the 12605, non-native French speakers were lauding and employing French both for its beauty and because they felt that it would attractthe largest audience as most people had this language in cominon. The idea of the commonness of French spread in the second half of the thirteenth century and continued into the fourteenth. In his essay On Vernacular Eloquence (c.1302) that he composed in Latin, Dante explained that the language 'of oil alleges fo r itself, because it is an easier and more pleasant vernacular tongue, whatever has been translated or composed in vernacular prose belongs to it'.3O Oil, of course, did not have agency outside of those who employed it to compose their texts, and throughout ~hese the widespread nature of French is emphasized. This is especially impressive if one remembers how recent the rise of the vernacular was - Geoffrey of Villehardouin wrote the first vernacular prose history only a little under a century earlier. Within fifty years, it became a 'common' language comparable to Latin. Another Italian, Martin da Canal, wrote his 'History of Venice' (Estoire de Venise, 1267-75) in French because the French language runs throughout the world (lengue franceise corl parmi Ie monde}.31 The same notion was repeated a century later by John Gower, who said that a treatise in French would reach 'the whole world' (enfranrois a tout Ie monde), and this from a trilingual author who wrote in Latin, English and French .32
28 Li Liures dou trel.or a reproduction of ms.franfais 1110 in the Bibliotheque nationale (Paris: imprimerie Imperiale, t863) 1.1.1. 29 The extent of French writing in Italy and its connection to local politics has recently been examined by Lau ra Moreale in 'French Literature, Florentine Politics, and Vernacular Historical Writing, 1270- 1348 ', Speculum, 85 (20tO): 868-893.
30 Allegat ergo pro se lingaa oil quod propter sui faciliorem llC delectabiliorem vulgaritarem quicquid redactum sive inventum est ad vulgare prosaicLlm , suLlm est: videlicet Biblia cum Troyanorum Romanorumque gestibus compilala et Arturi regis ambages pulcerrime et quamplures alie ystorie ac doctrine (Dante, De vulgari eloqllelllia, 1.x.2, consulted at Dante Online:
Perhaps Risticello da Pisa and Marco Polo had similar reasons for their choice to write of the latter's travels in Old French. This was an Old French noted for being 'uncouth' by modern scholars and even occasionally described as pu zzling." Yet this Old French seems to have been a marvelous vehicle for transmission and set the stage for such a widespread expansion that it could be matched by few works - it was translated into Tuscan, Venetian, German, Latin, later to Irish.:>4 A 'jaus franceis', as insular French was once dubbed , did not then constitute an impediment to understanding or textual transmis s ion ?~ Indeed, as Serge Lusignan has shown, a long campaign of affirming Parisian French as the superior form of French began in the thirteenth century, to the extent that we even see an author born in Meung-sur-Loire - L50 km from Paris, just outside of Orleans and in the heart of the royal domain of the King of' France - excusing himself for his 'crude, wretched and savage' language, because he was not born in Paris.J6 The spread of 'French global' was acknowledged even outside of the sphere of Romance languages. As early as the twelfth century, we see Danish nobles sendin g their sons to Paris to become familiar with French language and French literature.37 By the mid-
33 As noted by Gang Zhou in 'Small Talk : A New Reading of Marco Polo 's II milione', MLN 124 (2009): 1-22 (at p. 3). 34 Zhou, 'Small Talk', p. 3. As Zhou points out (p. 4), the narrative lacks the usual details of a travel narrative , to the extent that 'one can't help but wonder whether the true focus of Marco Polo's book was the journey to the East , or the retu rn to the West , or both'. If it is a narrative of reintegration inlo the Western world, as Zhou suggests , the choice of Old French as the language of the text is especially interesting. In it. we can see not the desire for reintegration at a local Venetian ' Ital ian' leyel. but within the larger world of the West. 3S This expression is used by the narrator of the French life of St Edward the Confessor, who says he learned his French only in England and asks those who learned it elsewhere to correct his text where necessary, and has been studied to gauge the extent to which French was common or actiyely needed to be learned: see William Rothwell, 'The "faus fran~ai s d' Angleterre": Later Anglo-Norman ', in Anglo-Norman Anniversary Essays, ed. by Ian Short (London: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1993), pp. 309 ff; Ad Putter has a different interpretation; see his 'Multilingualism in England and in Wales, c.1200: The Testimony of Gerald of Wal es' ,in Medieval Mullilingalism, ed. by Kleinhenz and Busby, pp. 88 ff. Commenting on the lack of beauty of one's French is a. common trope in vernacular prefaces, continuing the tradition of the unworthy author who writes nonetheless. Comparative eyidence (see text related to note 37) from thoroughly French authors makes similar, if not harsher, statements and indicates that it is difficult to gauge how much remarks like this can tell us about the actual level of French in England. 36 Here his anxiety seems to be speaking like. a bumpkin: mon tangage/ rude, maloslru, el sauvage in Lusignan , La langue des rois. p. 220; see also his other work on the push for the superiority of Parisian French: Lu signan , Parler vulgairemenl: les intellectuels et fa fal1gu efrtln ~a i.\·e aw: Xllle ef XIVe siecles (Montreal: Vrin-Presses de "Universi te de Montreal, 1986), pp. 67 ff; Lusignan , ' Langue fran~aise et societe du XlJle au XVe siecle'. in Nouvelle hisfoire de fa languefrall~aise, ed. by J. Chaurand (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1999), pp. 91-143. 37 Bi schoff, 'The Study of Foreign Languages in the Middle Ages', p. 210. LINGUA FRANCA LEGALIS? 147 thirteenth century, the anonymous Konungs skllggsja ('King 's Mirror') advised that, ' if you wish to become perfect in knowledge, you must learn all languages, first of all Latin and French, for these idioms are most widely used; and yet, do not neglect your native tongue or speech' ,38 This was a guide for merchants and seafarers written in Norwegian, suggesting the reader learn French alongside Latin to be able to communicate most widely. In the thirteenth century, the great European fairs and markets were still in France and contributing to the spread of the language. The crusaders' Levant was also a center of diffusion of Old French, and it was there that many Scandinavian warriors came in contact with the French language and customs.19 From Brunetto's Italy to this author's Norway, French was clearly seen as a common tongue and the language of choice for a wide audience in the thirteenth century. The medieval francophonie, or French global, clearly had a strong cultural presence from the thirteenth century on. It was kaleidoscopic in nature and colored in various dialects, but it provided a common, mutually-intelligible language over a vast expanse of space covering many kingdoms and communities.
Law French Literature, one might say, is different from law. F. Scott Fitzgerald once noted that part of the beauty of all literature was that 'you discover that your longings are universal longings, that you ' re not lonely and isolated from anyone'.4(1 Law, on the other hand, is most often represented in its space of operation. One might see these universal longings in the law of nature, and to some extent in the ius commune , but is there something in this for vernacular, secular, customary law as well? Literary scholars have been much more ready to examine commonalities and influences between things local than legal historians. In medieval legal hi story, the uni versal as expressed by Common Law and the ius commune is directly opposed to local customs and other leges particulares. These seem firmly grounded in their local cultural settings, bathed in distinct local terminology and practice that make them idiosyncratic and occasionally to the point of being unintelligible to the outsider. To a certain extent this is undoubtedly true, but there is also reason to believe that the wave of French lingua franca may have also washed over the world of legal professionals.
38 The King's Mirror: Speculum Regale - KOllungs Skuggsjd, tran s. by Laurence Marcellus Larson (New York: OUP for The American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1917), iii, p. 81. 39 The King s Mirror, p. 28. 40 F. SCOlf Fitzgerald on Writing, ed. by Larry W. Phillips (New York : Scribner, 1985), p. 10. 148 ADA MARlA KUSKOWSKI
The new work on rnedievaljrancophonie shows convincingly that this was a cultural fact at the forefront of contemporary minds and one that influenced authors' choice of language when they set oUl to write. It was variously a local language, the language of ruling elites, and a prestige language. It was constitutive of 'imagined communities' on a number of levels including the supra-'national'. The question is whether French legal writing was in any sense participating in something common and can be seen as part of this larger medieval Jrancophonie. namely, whether seemingly localized legal literature also could have had an outward turn. The language of law can be very instructive here. Starting with David Mellinkoff, the language of law has been studied to trace the development of a language particular to the law, one with a separate identity that was outside of everyday parlance.41 More recently, scholars have evaluated the extent of its use in court and what that might mean conceptually. Serge Lusignan's comparative study of the rise of French as the language of law and power in the royal courts of France and England from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century provides a seminal understanding not only of the rise of the vernacular in legal culture but also its relation to politics and authority.42 Much work has been done by scholars of England, where notably there were three competing languages. Paul Brapd, for instance, has shown that though Latin continued to be the language of formal record, the spoken language and language of pleading of the secular courts was French in the city, borough, county and royal courts of England.43 It was the language in which legislation was drafted and discussed, the language of oral instruction and so of the legal literature that grew out of that instruction.44 Paul Hyams approached legal language from a different perspective by examining the place of the French language as the conceptual backbone of basic legal concepts in England.45 As he noted, the basic essential pleaders' language is French and arose out of lay pleading before the age of Jawyers.46 The conte, for instance, was a tale that became in the
41 David Mellinkoff, The Language of the Law (Boston: Little, Brown & Co, 1963), pp . 3 ff. See also Paul Brand, 'The Language of the English Legal Profession: The Emergence of a Distinctive Legal Lexicon in Insular French' ,in The Anglo-Norman Language and its Contexts, ed. by Richard P. Ingham (Rochester, NY: Baydell & Brewer, 2010), pp. 94- 101. 42 See Lusignan, La langue des rois. 43 Paul Brand, 'The Languages of the Law in Later Medieval England', in Multilingualism in Later Medieval Britain, cd. by D. A. Trotter (Rochester, NY: D. S. Brewer, 2000), pp. 66-67,75. 44 Brand, 'The Languages of the Law', pp. 73, 75. 45 Hyams, 'Thinking Law in Frcnch' ,pp.175-197. 46 Hyams, 'Thinking Law in French', p. 182. 4
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legal context the tale of allegation told in court and survived in English as the COllnt, or specific charge.47 Even if some terms were originall y drawn from Latin, Engli sh lawyers understood and spoke the Common Law almost entirely in French!8 The reason for this is that the concepts that fo rmed the 'legal register' of the language were drawn from and still part of everyday French vernacular.49 This is something that brought together the 'Law French' from England to Outremer. While th ere arc important differences between the legal cultures from the Levant to the British [sles, perhaps most notably the wrils in England , the common language also provided a common Jegal lexicon. Thus, the common French legal lexicon shared by France and England pointed out by Hyams also appears in the French texts of the Levant, in words such as conte (charge), gage (surety),pledge (surety), or essoin (legal excuse), Other fami li ar words appear throughout the texts, such as assise, apel, usage, deslraindre, esgart, leilloi, sergent, requeste, bailli/bailif[. saisine and its obverse desaisine, to name a few.so In other words, it does not seem that English, French, or Levantine lawyers would have too much difficul ty reading each other's procedural pleaders' legal literature, or hearing it read. Indeed, one of the most remarkable aspects of this literature when taken together is that it appears at the same time. Perhaps the most convincing suggestion that something common is happening is that from around 1250 onward French legal writing nearly si multaneously springs up in France, England and in the Kingdom of Jeru salem (now seated in Cyprus), Before this time, French does appear as the language of law in the context of city and borough customs. However, legal writing in French veritably explodes in the second half of the th irteenth century - th e same time period where we see French being referred to as the other 'common ' language alongside Latin , a presti ge language preferred for its beauty and association with many centers of power, and being used as a preferred lan guage over Latin or an author 's native tongue irrespective of what may have been more traditional or more natural.
47 Hyams, 'Thinking Law in French'. 48 Hyams, 'Thinking Law in French', p. 184. 49 William Rothwell, 'The Trial Scene in Lanval and the Development of the Legal Register in Anglo Norman', NellphiloLogische Mitleilungen, 101 (2000): 17-36; Hyams, 'Thinking Engli sh Law in Frcnch',p.181 and passim. 50 The words listed here as appearing in the legal texts of the Levant are drawn from Philip of Novara's Livre. Ir I
150 ADA MARlA KUSKOWSKI
Sets of customs of the Jay courts that focus on procedure and pleading sequences written in the vernacular begin to appear in Northern France in the mid-thirteenth century,51 These are the Coulumes d'Anjou el du Maine (1246), which are soon followed by Pierre de Fontaine's Com'eil (1253), then the Livre de loslice el de Plel in around 1260 (an awkward fit as part of the coutumiers because much of it is a French translation of the Digest but almost always included as part of them), then the Elablissements de Saint Louis (127211273), followed by Le livre des constitutions demenees el Chastelet de Paris (between 1279 and 1282), Philippe de Beaumanoir's Coutumes de Beauvaisis (1283), CAncien Coulumier de Champagne (around 1295), and the Coutumier d'Artois (between 1283 and 1302)." The only earlier legal text that can loosely be included in this type in the area was the Summa de legibus normanniae, written between 1230 and 1250, and in the second half of the thirteenth century it receives both a translation in French prose and another in French verse. A simjlar contemporary movement occurred in England with texts of a similar genre, focused on the procedures of the lay courts. In around 1260, French became the 'the language of a new legal literature' devoted to the art of pleading in court." As G. D. G. Hall noted, despite the first portion of the thirteenth century beginning with many jurists coming together to form the sophisticated and learned composite work attributed to Bracton, it ended with works that were 'insular, lay and French', in which substantive law and principle are heavily masked by procedure and pJeading.'14 And so we see the appearance of the Anglo-French Cas de Demandes (Casus Plaeitarum) (l250s), Brevia Pleidez (Brevia Plaeitala) (c . 1260), Fet Assaver (e.1263), the tracts that come together as Lo Court Baron
51 For the coutumiers, see Ada Kuskowski, ' Writing Custom: Juristic Imagination and the Composition of Customary Law in Thirteenth-Century France' (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Cornell University, 20t3). 52 Coutumes d'Anjou el du Maine , in Coutumes et institutions de l'Anjou & du Maine : anterieurs au XVle siecle.· textes et documents: avec notes et dissertation. Premiere partie, Coutumes et styles. T. premier, ed. by c.-J. Bealltemps-Bcallpre (Paris: A. Durand et Pedone-Lauriel, 1877); Pierre de Fontaines. Le Conseii de Pierre de Fontaines 011. Traite de {'ancienne jurisprudence franfoise: nouvelle edition pubfiee d'apres un manuscrit du Xlll siecle. .. ,ed. by A. J. Marnier (Paris: Durand: Joubet, 1846); us etablissements de Saint Louis: accompagnes des textes primilijs et de textes derives, ed . by Paul Viollet, 4 vo1s (Paris: Renouard, 1881 - (886); Philippe de Beaumanoir. Coutumes de 8eauvaisis, ed . by A. Salmon (Paris: A. et J. Picard , 1970-74); Le livre des constitutions demenies el Chastelet de Paris, ed. by C. Mortet, in Memoires de fa Societe de I'histoire de Paris et de {'Ile-de -France , 10 (1883): 1-99; L'Ancien COl/tumier de Champagne (XIlle siecle) , ed. by Paulette Portejoie (Poitiers: P. Oudin, 1956); COlltllmier d'Artois: publie d'apres les manuscrits 5248 et 5249,fonds jranfais de fa Bibliotheque nattonale, ed. by Adolphe Tardif (Paris: A. Picard, 1883). 53 Mellinkoff, The Language of the Law,p.lli. 54 G. D. G. Hall, ' Introduction' , in The Treatise on the Laws and Customs of the Realm of England Commonly Called Glanvill, ed. by Hall (Oxford: OUP, 1993), p. xxx. 4
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(late thirteenth or early fourteenth century), Le Pie de la Coroune (1300), and the Mireur a justices (Th e Mirror of iustices) (1285-1290)." We al so see translations of earlier Latin legal texts appearing in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, for in stance a manuscript containing the Leges Edward; Confessoris translated as Le livre des leis de englelere as well as the translation of the Articuli Wille/mi, both potentiall y originall y translated in the late twelfth century.56 The title of onc rendition of the Brevia Placitata is Ces sun! les breis e les contes enromancees (These are the writs and counts rendered in romanz), and so the text is emphasizing the linguistic choice.57 Just as in France and England, jurists associated with the Kingdom of Jerusalem and its government in exile in Cypru s also began to wr jt ~ a legal literature of a similar genre - devoted to procedure and pl eading in the lay courts - in the mid-thirteenth century. The first vernacular legal treatise of the Levant actually appeared earlier, the Livre au roi (1189- 1200) which was more a justification of royal prerogative as it comes down to us, as the text we have is one pieced together from later texts.58 The real wave of vernacular legal writing in the French vernacular in the crusader states of Outremer began around half a century later: Livre des Assises de la Cour des Bourgeois (1229-1244) , Philip of Novara's Livre de forme de plet (1250s), John of Ibelin's Livre des Assises (c.1264 ), Geoffrey Le Tor's Livre (c. 1265), La Clef des Assises (c.1265-1266), the Lignages d'Outremer (c.1270, more a description of lines of succession but usuall y included in this group) and James of Ibelin's Livre ( 1271 -1 286)." Of these authors, we know that Philip of Novara was an Italian
55 Fet Assaver in Four Thirteenth-Century lLiw Tracts , ed. by George Woodbine (Yale: Yale University Press, 1910); Brevia Placitata , ed. by G. J. Turner and Theodore F. T. Plucknett (London: Bernard Quaritch for the Selden Society, 66, 195 1); Ca slIs PlaciLO rum alld RepOrTS of Cases ill Ihe King's Courts 1272- 1278, ed. by Willi am Huse Dunham (London: Bernard Quartich for the Selden Soc iety. 69,1952); Le pie de la courOflne, BL, Harley MSS , 6669; The Court Baron: Being Precedents for Use in Seignorial and Other Local Courts, Together with Select Pleas from the Bishop of Ely's Court of Liuleport, ed. by Frederic William Maitland and WiJl iam P. Baildon (London: Bernard Quaritch for the Selden Society. 4, 1891); and for a number of the dales above, see Brand, 'The Languages of the Law in Later Medieval England'. p. 70. 56 Cambridge, Univers ity Library, MS Ee . t.l, fols 3v-8r (Early Eng lish Laws , entry by Bruce O'Brian:
59 Maurice Grandclaude, Etude critique sur les livres des Assise~' de Jerusalem ... (Paris: Jouve, 1923); Filip af Novara, I.e Livre de Forme de Plait, cd. and trans. by Peter Edbury, Texts and Studies in the Hi story of Cy prus, 61 (Nicosia: Cyprus Research Centre, 2009); Edbury, John of Ibelin am/the Kingdom of Jerusalem (Rochester, NY: Boydell , 1997); John of Ibeli": I.e Livre des Assises, cd. by Edbury (Le iden: Brill,2oo3). 152 ADA MARIA KUSKOWSKI composing in French, much like we saw with Brunetto. This corpus was composed In French, but was then translated into many languages from the Middle Ages onward, most commonly into Italian.60 The texts above have quite some range, from a more sophisticated treatise to a shorter terser text. They are united thematically through their discussion of the customs, procedures and pleading instruction in a common language. Outside of subject matter, the pedagogical nature of the texts provides an additional similarity."
An explanation of why a certain language was chosen is not often found in medieval legal texts. Of the French cQu/umiers, only Philippe de Beaumanoir commented on why he chose to write in French in his Coufumes de Beauvaisis (1284). As Beaumanoir explained, 'Clerks have a manner of speaking in Latin that is very pretty; but the lay people who have to plead against them in lay court do not even understand the words that they say in French properly, as much as they may be pretty and appropriate to the pleading'." While Beaumanoir acknowledges the beauty of Latin and does not deny that it is appropriate as a language of law, he marginalizes it by declaring that even a spoken French imbued with some Latin is incomprehensible to lay people. For thi s reason, the Latin language is an awkward fit in the secular courts and in the text he was writing on the custom, procedures and appropriate forms of pleading in the secular courts. This was the reason, he continued to explain, that he would set things out in such a manner as lay people could understand, in everyday vernacular French, albeit in its developing written form. In other words, then, he was intent on tapping into the common legal register.63 Beaumanoir's comments appear in a chapter devoted to the topic of complaints, but his comments speak more generally both to language and to the expression of ideas . He is explaining both why he is writi ng in French and also why he is writing in a simpler French , taking the time to explain certain concepts used by the clerks in ecclesiastical courts that are still useful in secular courts. So in secular courts, complaints are the same thing that the clerks callUbelles, defenses are the same thing that the clerks call excepcions, and defenses
60 Marie-Adela·ide Nielen-Vandevoorde, 'Un livre meconnu des Assises de Jerusalem: les Lignages d'Outremer', Bibliotheque de l'ec ole des chartes, 153 (1995): 103- 130 (at p. 104). 61 John S. Beckerman , 'Law-Writing and Law-Teaching: Treatise Evidence of (he Fonnal Teaching of English Law in the Late Thirteenth Century', in Learning Ihe Law: Teaching and the Transmission of Law in England 1150-1900, ed. by Jonathan A. Bush and Alain Wijffels (London: Hambledon , 1999), pp. 33-50; Brand , 'The Languages of the Law in Later Medieval England', p.70. 62 us clercs on une maniere a parler mou bele selonc Ie Latin; mes Ii lai qui Ont a pliedier can Ire aus en courllaie n'emendenr pas bien les mos meismes qu·it diem en Fran(:ois , lOu! SOil it bel et COil venable au ptel (Philippe de Beaumanoir, VI.196). 63 £( pour ce, de ce qui pills souvem est dit ellla cour laie et don 't plus gram mestiers est, nous lrailerons en ceSl ciJapilre en tele maniere que Ii fai puissant entendre (Philippe de Beaumanoir, Vl .196). LINGUA FRA NCA LEGALIS? 153 to defenses are what the clerks call replicacions. He sees many Latin-language concepts used in ecclesiastical courts are similar to those in secular courts, and it might even be argued that Beaumanoir by explaining these terms is endorsing their utility. This is certainly a place we can see Latin being used as a lexicographical source for an evolving professionalizing vernacular. Nonetheless, Beaumanoir is clear that he is matching his language to the audience he desires to reach - the French vernacular is the language of accessibility in lay courts and more generally for lay people. There is also only one contemporary author who composed legal literature in French in England who explained his choice of language, namely, the truculent author of the Mireur a justices (Mirror of Justices) (1285-1290)_" He did not write this in a particularly beautiful French - Maitland, who did not think very highly of the text, suggested that a good editor of the Mirror 'ought to know what medieval French would sound like when spoken by a medieval Englishman and listened to by a sleepy clerk'.M However, as David Seipp has noted , a source does not necessarily need high standing as a solid legal authority to still provide a lot of historical insight. Notably for us, as Mireur's anonymous author explained, he compiled this summary of the law of persons 'in a language more easily understood, in your aid and in the aid of the commonalty of the people'." The Mireur author, same as Beaumanoir, was tapping into a familiar and common reason qua topos as explanation of an author's use of the vernacular - the common nature of the language and greater ability to reach a wider audience. The author is probably not referring to the common people, but the greater number of people who he might find important as his audience - we are nowhere here dealing with a language that is available to all people; this is a language for those who are active in the courts and morc sophisticated at least in speech if not in writing.67 The suggestion has been made for the legal literature of England that the French procedural pleaders' treatises such as Brevia Placitata show the necessity of teaching French as a foreign language.68 It would be worthwhile to compare these to those in France
64 As D. A. Trotter notes, the English title seems to be a mistranslation (Trotter, 'Language and Law in the Anglo-French Mirror of Ju stices', in Cart de la philologie: milanges en I'honneur de Leena LOjsfedl (Helsinki: Societe Neophilogique , 2007), p. 257, n. I. For dating see David Seipp, 'The Mirror of Ju stices', in Learnillg the lAw, ed. by Bush and Wijffels, pp. 85 ff. 65 Frederic William Maitland, 'Introd uction '. in The Mirror of Justices, ed. by William Joseph Whittaker (London: Bernard Quaritch for the Selden Society, 7,1895), p. li ii.
66 E en iaf/guge plus entendable en eide de VOIIS e del comllll del poep/e e en vergoigne de faus juges campi/ai ces/c petite summe de fa lei des persolles, des genz: Mirror of Justices , preface, p. 3. 67 As Eric Hobsbawm noted, 'a single national language only became important when ordinary citizens became an important componen l of the state' (Hobsbawm, 'Language, Culture and Nat ionalldentity', Social Research, 63 (1996): t06s- to80 (al p. t068)). 68 Brand, 'Languages of the Law', pp. 70 ff. 154 ADA MARIA KUSKOWSKI and th e Levant, because these also have an inst ructional nature and include explanations of terminology, not because it is French but because it is a specialized legal language. This is onc of the parallels between Beaumanoir's Coutumes and the Mireur: both of their authors were expanding the ambit of French by supplying terms and their definitions as weB as creating both legal and non-legal words." They are part of the process that Thomas Brunner described, of creating a written language out of an oral onc. Outside of Beaumanoir and the Mireur author, French-language legal literature of the thirteenth century generally did not explain choice of language. This is not surprising or out of the ordinary. It was not every vernacular text that needed an explanation why it was in the vernacular. While these explanations emerge as, prologue topoi with the rise of vernacular writing, they seem to occur most often on two occasions: first, when an author or type of work would be expected to be expressed in a different language, be it Latin or a native tongue, and second, to explain the need for a translation of a Latin text. There may be no better place to examine the ri se of French as a language of law and the transmission and reception of the ius commune and other Latin-language legal literature than the study of the translation of Latin legal texts into various vernaculars, and for OUf purposes French. This subject has, as of yel, received very little attention even though study of the translation of acts of practice such as charters has been both vigorous and highly illuminating.'" Yet it mu st mean something, and something important, that the major Latin legal texts all saw themselves translated into French during the thirteenth century - just as the Bible was translated into French in the 1230s, so were Justinian 's Institutes, Gratian 's Decretum and Tancred's Ordo.71 As the century progressed, Justinian's Institutes underwent an additional translation into French verse, Azo's Summa appeared in French, and as mentioned earlier, the originally Latin Summa de legibus normanniae was translated twice, both into prose and into verse.72
69 Trotter, 'Language and Law in the Anglo-French Mirror of Justices', pp. 265-267. 70 The literature on thi s is much too large to include here, so these are some representative examples. 71 Fel ix: Olivier-Martin, Les Institutes de Justiniell ell jranrais: Traductioll anOllyme du Xl/Ie sieele, publiee avec lme introduction par Felix Olivier-Martin, ... (Paris: Receuil Sirey, 1935); Leena LOfstedt, GrlItiani decretum: fa traduction en ancien jrall(:ais du Decret de GratielJ. Vol. fI, Causae 1-14 (Helsi nki: Societas scien tiarum fen nica, 1993); Li ordillaire de maiSlre Tancrez, Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, MS. fro 1073 .
72 Claire-Hel(~ne Lavigne, 'La traduction en vers des In stitutes de Ju stinien ler: myt hes , realitcs et en terprise de versification ', Mela: journal des lraducleurs: translators' journal (Canada) , 49 (2004): 511-525; Helene Biu , ' La Somme Ace: prolegomenes it une etude de la traduction fran~aise de la Summa Azollis d'apres Ie manuscrit Bib!. Vat., Reg. Lat. 1063', Bibliotheque de {'Ecole des Charles, 167 (2009): 417-464. 4
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This is only a hint at how legal ideas originally developed in Latin were bein g disseminated, and how legal ideas were being 'vernacularized' or ' Frenched'. A full study of the pace, range, quality and nature of the translation of this legal literature still remains to be achieved, but wou ld be an invaluable contr ibution to the hi story of the transmission of ideas. Tracing particular manuscripts might inform us about the geography and trajectory of transmission, and examining the di ffe rences between the Latin and vernacular versions would tell us a lot about how ideas remained similar or changed in the transmission from one language to another. Quotations of Latin-language Roman and canon law texts appear in translation in a significant number of vernacular legal texts, and sometimes the translated lext can appear as a stand-alone within the same manus<;ript. They could be studied fo r the influence or use of Romani·st ideas, but the fact of their translation in French is also an essential marker of the rise of the vernacular as a language of law. The translations are also im portant because they often offer an explanation for why one might turn to French as the language of insc ri ption of legal ideas. There was a need to explain why one would translate something al ready available in an ' international' language. Generally they evince not only an interest in pedagogy and the di ssemination of ideas but also with learning those ideas quickly and properly. While it may be. easy to assume that the translations were ai med at educating a vernacular audience, both the translation of Justinian's Institutes and Azo's Summa make clear that a common preoccupation for legal translators seems to have been to reach potential students to entice them to university legal studies, or to prepare them for studying the texts in Latin by first learning the more accessible vernacular version.') The less subtile vernacul ar was then becoming an entry point to more complex ideas developed in Latin - this is another place we can see the more accessible and wide-ranging ability of the French vernacular. It was also something beyond that. Guill aume Chapu, for instance, opened his French verse translation of the Grand Coulumier de Normandie with three explanations that addressed why he was taking the time to translate this text. The first is in service of 'current and future lawyers (avocQts qui sonl el seronl), who wish to know the text and its contents by heart faster; since we hold that rhymed French is easier to intern ali ze (conchevoir) than prose'; the second is because rhymed language is more beautiful than prose; and the third is the common authors' topos of getting readers to pray for their soul.74 The vernacular, then, is better at facilitating learning, and the rhymed vernacular even more so. The translator is also pursuing aesthetic notions - ones that place legal literatu re in a wider spectrum, one that reaches out beyond the narrow practical needs of legal professionals.
73 See generally Biu, ' La SommeAce',pp.417 ff.
74 See text at Lavigne, ' La traduct ion en vers des Institutes de Justin ien', p. 519. According 10 Lav igne, Guillaume Chapu seems to have done his uanslalion from the Latin text and not the French-prose version. 156 ADA MARIA KUSKOWSKI
Furthermore, the use of the term conchevoir is important, encompassing acts from conceiving a child to coming to a real internalized conception of an idea, and makes the rhymed vernacular the gateway to true understanding. In fact, these customary texts that explained local pleading and procedural practices may not have been as local as one might initially imagine. I have argued elsewhere that we can trace the movement and use of legal literature in France outside its designated ambit, so texts that purpose to describe the customs of one region are copied in the service of the composition of a set of customs for another region.75 This is not only the practice of the legal community in France, but also in the LevanC ~ Currently, I know of two hints that England also participated in the movement of written custom - passages of Fe! Assaver show up in the Casus Placitorum and a manuscript of the Grand Coutumier de Normandie recently acquired by Harvard University styled itself as the customs of England (as liber consuetudinis anglye, which is a Latin version).77 Customs, procedures and pleading methods, though not exact replicas transferred from one community to the next, were nonetheless seen as a common pool of.knowledge used in common ways throughout these legal communities. The movement of legal literature and the sourcing of legal knowledge from outside local communities was already a common practice with city and borough customs . Mary Bateson has shown how the Norman customs of Breteuil were brought across the Channel and used to compose the customs of many other boroughs (,affiliation').'" The Establissernents de Rauen (1160-1170), while meant to describe the organization and nature of Rauen's government, became the basis for many other collections of city and borough customs - a number of these adopting the customs in French rather than Latin.19
75 Kuskowski, 'Writing Custom and 'Inveming Legal Space: From Regional Custom to Common Law in the Coutumiers of Medieval France', in Medieval Constructions oj Space: Practice. Place, and Territory from the 9th to the 15th Century, ed. by Meredith Cohen and Fanny Madeleine (Farnham: Ashgate, forthcoming 2014). 76 Kuskowski, 'Writing custom'. 77 Woodbine, ' Introduction', in Four Thirteenth-Century Law Tracts, p. 14; Harvard Law School Library:
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Sometimes the city and borough customs were written in French for cultural reasons. In Flanders, the Livre Raisin (1267) described the customs of Lille in the French vernacular because French thrived as a prestige vernacular therc .1IO Al so, the importance of French to the development of maritime law should not be forgotten . As Maryanne Kowaleski has shown, French was the common language of maritime activity .81 Like Hyams, Kowaleski found a French lexicon at the base of maritime activity, from sea terms to the names of ships - for example, the ' Iodeman' or ship's guide (pilot) in treacherous waters came from the (Norman) French lomanllodman used to designate a skilled navigator who knew how to work estuaries and ports.82 Beyond language, it is also significant that borough customs of ports in England were alI.in Anglo French which points to the importance of French in yet another type of legal literature and legal thinkingY Texts like the Rolls oj oteron and other expressions of maritime law were composed in the French vernacular, and we also see them moving around (perhaps more obvious for maritime law); for instance, a copy of the laws of Oleron were kept by many port towns in England.84
Conclusion: Lingua Franca Legalis? Jt is well known that the ius commune provided medieval Christendom with a common conception of law and common legal language that transcended the boundaries of European polities and vanquished the vernacular tower of Babel. The development of medieval kingdoms in the high and late Middle Ages with a machinery that foreshadows the modern state, the later conception of law and language as a part of national identity, and the current scholarly tendency to evaluate the ius commune as the common and the vernacular, practical and customary as local and unique have led to the obfuscation of commonalities that can occur outside of the ius commune and between legal communities that may at first glance seem disparate. This contribution has raised the question of what it meant to be part of the ' French hexagon', and to think law in French in the thirteenth century. From the Levant to the British Isles, legaJ literature was being composed in French for the services of Jay courts
SO Le Livre Roisin . 8 1 Maryanne Kowa leski. 'The French of England: A Maritime Unguafranca?', in Language and CullUre in Medieval Britain: The French of England, c.JJOO-c.1500, cd. by Jocelyn Wogan-Browne et al. (Woodbridge: Boydell for York Medieval Press, 2009), pp. 103-17. 82 Kowaleski , 'The French of England', p. 114. 83 Kowaleski , 'The French of England', p. 108. 84 Kowaleski, 'The French of England', p. 117. 158 ADA MARIA KUSKOWSKl and those who attended them. It is remarkable that this legal literature appears throughout the wider jrancophonie nearly simultaneously around 1250, and that the second half of th e thirteenth century marks a moment of efflorescence in French legal writing in all of these areas - incidentally at the same time as we see a multiplication of references to French as a common language in a manner akin to Latin. Legal history had been focu sed along national lines until Francesco Calasso exhumed the idea of the ius commune a little over half a century ago.85 Since then, the movement of scholars, dissemination of manuscripts, and use of and references to the ius commune have been studied to assess the manner, nature and extent of its spread through medieval Christendom. A comprehensive survey of French vernacular legal writing of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries remains to be achieved, so more specific results or obse rvations must wait. Nonetheless, the preliminary observations above do seem to indicate that it may be worth taking a closer look at th e 'common' in French vernacular legal texts beyond traditional boundaries. If a French language, literature and culture existed beyond borders and waters, then it is quite likely that th ose legal professionals milling around lay courts might have wanted to participate in it - they notably had those essential proficiencies in reading and writing that would permit them to do so. Texts like Pierre de Fontaine's Conseii, Britton, or Philip of Novara's Livre were undoubtedly meant for a local aud ience, but there is also reason to think th ey were also tapping into something larger through th e international language of vernacular secular authority and culture. Whether they actually ex pected or aimed to be read by a wider audience remains to be studied, but it is at the very least difficult to imagine that they did not see themselves as part of the nexus of power and culture represented by jrancophonie. If all of this came together to form an ' imagined community', what was it that they were imagining? Choice of language, as Patrick Geary noted , had an ideological or propagandisti c significance in itself that did not depend on the actual content of the writing.86 The choice of French, at the very least, was a comment on the nature of power and authority in the thirteenth century and into the fourteenth. It tapped into not only the power of a local elite or the king of one kingdom, but was also connecting to a larger ideology of authority that surroun ded secul ar power, proved by th e geographical expanse, beauty and commonness of its representative language. Unlike how we mi ght imagine an ' imagined community', this was an extra-territorial culture of power and beauty that permitted a francophone and customary legal culture to ri se beyond the local and territorial and provide a bridge between legal communities previously not possible.
85 Francesco Calasso, imroduzione at diritIo comune (Milan: Giuffre, 1951 ). 86 Geary, Language and Power in the Early Middle Ages, p. 59.